4 reasons why Twitter dropped the geo-ball and Foursquare picked it up

Eighteen months ago I went out on a limb saying that Twitter was the best social platform for a wide range of possible geo applications, saying that location was “in Twitter’s DNA”. Looking back, I still believe that I was right, and that a year and half ago Twitter was best positioned among the competing players – Apple, Google, Facebook and yes, even Foursquare – to be the platform of choice for location apps.

Today, however, I’m calling this a huge missed opportunity for Twitter.

Now, it’s true that there are probably millions of geo-tagged tweets per day, and on the surface, that would seem to point to a vibrant geo platform, but the reality is, that the geo information on those tweets is at best an afterthought for most, when – if Twitter had played its cards right – location could have been an integral aspect of the Twitter experience.

So let’s look at some of the areas that Twitter location has failed to live up to its potential:

Static vs dynamic location

Yes, Twitter has “geo” data, but a large problem – and one that it should have pushed its users more to adopt – is that many people simply provide a “home” location at the city or state/province level and do not have geo-tagging of their actual location enabled.

Of course, that is the user’s prerogitive, and as Twitter is almost completely an open network, it makes sense that many users – the majority of who are still very wary of location based services – would feel uncomfortable sharing out their location all the time. That said, Twitter had the opportunity to user in a sea change in these attitudes, but for whatever reason, it was content to not push the acceptance of geo-tagging within its service.

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